Team Lidstrom holds off Team Staal in NHL all-star game

Entertaining, but no classic

Patrick Sharp #10 of the Chicago Blackhawks and Team Staal scores a goal past Tim Thomas #30 of the Boston Bruins and Team Lidstrom in the 58th NHL All- Star Game at RBC Center.

Photograph by: Bruce Bennett
, Getty Images

Team Lidstrom 11, Team Staal 10

RALEIGH, North Carolina — Carolina is football country. So why wouldn’t they enjoy two hockey teams combining for three converted touchdowns (21 points, er, goals) in an NHL All-Star Game?

Classic, old-style hockey, it wasn’t. Typical no-hit, no-resistance NHL All-Star fare it was, and the states of Carolina, North and South, lapped it up after being lured by the event’s bright lights.

Five different players scored two goals as the rosters of Team Lidstrom and Team Staal blew the doors off the Vegas over/under of 16.5 goals.

Sixteen-five? They nearly eclipsed it after two periods, when the Lidstroms led the Staal forces 7-6 through 40 minutes.

Loui Eriksson scored the winning goal at 18:49 of the third period, into an empty net. What drama! The Staal team nearly forced overtime, when Eric Staal himself scored to make it 11-10, but it couldn’t jam another home in the dying seconds.

Naturally, captain Staal was ripped for letting his team blow a 4-0 first-period lead, the largest choke job in the history of the exhibition event.

Boston Bruins goaltender Tim Thomas has only been in three of these games, and he’s won each of them. The wise old owl asked assistant captain Martin St. Louis if he could play in the third period — the period of record, so to speak.

“It meant something to me,” said Thomas, the first goaltender to record wins in three consecutive all-star games. “I was hoping to play the third period so I would be in a position to get that on my record.”

Just when you thought you’d seen it all ... the game featured the first all-star penalty shot.

Alex Ovechkin practically begged for it, throwing his stick to interfere with Matt Duchene’s third-period breakaway, then smiling a gap-toothed grin at the call.

“I want to be different,” Ovechkin deadpanned, asked about his flagrant foul.

The Staal team’s Patrick Sharp won a car as MVP on his goal and two assists (they poll the votes before the game is over, which was a factor on the Sharp selection). Asked about winning the prize in a losing cause, Sharp said, “I thought we won the game.”

He has a point. This is the only hockey game of the year where visitors can’t tell the losing room from the winners. Smiles and cornball jokes all around.

Even Phil Kessel managed a grin, despite being last man picked in Friday’s fantasy draft and the only Lidstrom forward not to score a point.

Given the accepted no-hitter concept — there were literally no hits recorded on the official sheet — the greatest players in the world (minus Sidney Crosby) created scoring chances at will, and goalies were at their mercy.

Poor Marc-André Fleury of the Pittsburgh Penguins surrendered three goals on the first five shots he faced, including Team Staal’s first of the game by Ovechkin just 50 seconds in off a defenceman’s skate. Mercifully, Fleury only had to put up with the abuse for 20 minutes, before handing off to Jonas Hiller with a nod, a wink and an, “all yours, pal.”

At the other end of the ice, local hero Cam Ward might have been chuckling as his Staal forces ran up a quick 4-0 lead, but he wasn’t laughing long — before the first period was over, the Lidstroms had tied the game with four quick ones of their own.

Just as in a legitimate Just as in a legitimate game, it only took one to start a flood. A good ol’ Ovechkin turnover (nice blind backhand, Ovie) turned into an Anze Kopitar breakaway. Kopitar beat Ward with a sick backhand upstairs.

Montreal Canadiens goalie Carey Price, Ward’s relief help, said he “tried not to look” at all the goals and chances before he got into the game. Hiller was terrific in the middle period for Lidstrom, stopping 15 of 17 shots.

With four minutes to go in the second, the Lidstroms took their first lead of the game on a Danny Brière goal, the second of the evening by a Gatineau guy (Claude Giroux had scored the Staals’ fourth goal). Brière later added another goal, too.

The game stopped for nothing, except TV timeouts. Penalties are rare in an all-star contest, this one had zero. Players pushed the limits of offsides, before Ryan Kesler was whistled down for crossing the line ahead of Ovechkin.

“Hey you can’t blow that thing can you?” said the Canucks forward to a linesman. Kesler was miked for the occasion.

“The game was close,” Kesler said afterward, “that’s all you can ask for.”

An inspired day, from the start. As fans tore themselves away from a sun-drenched tailgate scene, they found their hearts warmed inside by a lovely pre-game “sticks in the middle” skit. It formed a link to the fantasy draft format of Friday night, and was a slick way to introduce two Carolina Hurricanes Legends, Rod Brind’Amour and Ron Francis.

As a child pulled a stick from centre ice, a voice called out:

“That’s my stick,” said Brind’Amour, emerging from the shadows into the spotlight, to a thunderous ovation.

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